LITMIR.BIZ

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mimicking each other.

      Carefully Finch began, ‘I have been very lucky all my life. You know that.’

      He did know, of course. Ralf had met and liked all three of Finch’s older brothers, and their wives and children, and he had stayed with and been impressed by the Buchanan parents and their beautiful house in Vancouver. Finch’s was a remarkable, ambitious, wealthy family – held together by strong affection, as well as pride in their separate and mutual achievements. His own background could not have been more different and this solidity that Finch questioned was just one of the things he found attractive about her.

      ‘It sounds ungrateful, spoiled, to say that there can be too much ease. But it is what I feel. I have had it easy in the world, but climbing mountains scrapes away all the layers of expectation and assumption. It’s a challenge separate from the rest of my life.’

      ‘And separate from me.’

      ‘Yes, that’s true.’ She knew that she owed him the truth. At least a portion of it, the one she freely admitted to herself. ‘I know that it’s selfish, but it’s something that I need to do. I don’t find the same fixed determination or absolute satisfaction in anything else.’

      Ralf inclined his head and she studied the sharp line of sun- and windburn on his cheekbones. They had discussed all this before. Finch had never been able to make him understand the force that impelled her to climb and tonight her urgency had made her speak too forcibly. She knew that she had hurt him, and she was sad and ashamed.

      ‘I understand,’ he said at length. He reached out to the champagne bottle and refilled their glasses. ‘Come back safely,’ he said, and he drank again.

      ‘I will,’ Finch promised, believing that she would and also understanding how much she would have to live through before that could happen. The knot of anticipation tightened again in her chest.

      They finished the champagne as they dressed for dinner, then they went to the lodge dining-room and Ralf moved sociably around the tables and talked to the guests. After dinner he went to his daily meeting with the ski guides and the pilots, and Finch walked back to their cabin with James, and Kitty leaning on a stick. James was tired and went straight into the bedroom while the women wandered out on to the deck. It was a clear night, bright with stars.

      With the end of her stick Kitty nudged a wooden lid to one side and a turquoise eye opened to the sky in a column of steam. ‘Hot tub?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes, definitely,’ Finch agreed.

      Kitty pressed the button and the water boiled with bubbles. They discarded their clothes with little exclamations at the freezing air on their skin, then slid into the pine-scented heat. They sat back, submerged to their chins and sighing with satisfaction.

      After a minute Kitty asked meaningfully. ‘So?’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘You know what I mean.’ Kitty was the family news-gatherer and lieutenant to Finch’s mother in the battle to persuade Finch to commit herself.

      ‘Okay. Ralf asked me to marry him. I said no.’

      Kitty groaned. ‘Finch! Why not?’

      ‘I’m not in love with him.’

      ‘You gave a good impression of it. I thought you were nuts about him.’

      ‘No. Not nuts enough, evidently.’

      Kitty tucked a tendril of damp hair into the knot on top of her head. ‘You could have all of this. All the things you like best, with a guy who adores you.’

      ‘Perverse, aren’t I?’

      She wondered if James and Kitty had embarked on their partnership because they saw each other as offering all the things they liked best. There was no note of envy in Kitty’s all this, either. James was a successful investment analyst and well able to provide for his family. They even had two-year-old twin girls, who were staying for the weekend with one of their pairs of adoring grandparents. All three of Finch’s brothers were notably successful. Marcus, the eldest, was an architect like his distinguished father and Caleb, the youngest, was a marine ecologist and film maker. His most recent film, about the pygmy sea-horse, had sold around the world. All three were married, with good-looking wives and attractive children.

      Finch raised one knee out of the bubbles. The air was bitterly cold and she hastily submerged it again.

      No wonder her family thought she was different, difficult. But surely it was less of a contradiction than it seemed, to reject all the things you like best? By which, she supposed, Kitty meant mountains and unlimited skiing, and probable financial ease, and a man who loved her and didn’t threaten her.

      Because by settling for them, and no more, you chose an ordinary life.

      She was fearful of what might lie ahead of her out in Nepal. But she also tasted the fear with the savour of anticipation.

      Kitty rolled her head against the pine walls of the tub. ‘Poor Ralf. Was he devastated?’

      Finch considered. On the whole Ralf didn’t go in for devastation. ‘No.’

      ‘But he does love you, you know.’

      ‘Yes.’

      Finch had been in love only once in her life and it was not with Ralf.

      ‘How does your knee feel?’

      ‘Don’t evade the issue with doctoring.’

      ‘I wouldn’t dream.’

      Kitty laughed and reached out to touch Finch on the arm. ‘We all want you to be happy.’ All of us, the Buchanan clan.

      ‘I am happy,’ Finch said softly.

      After Kitty had clambered out of the tub she sat for a few minutes alone, looking up and searching for the stars through the drifting curtain of steam.

      The next afternoon Ralf flew the three of them in the helicopter down to Kamloops for their return flight to Vancouver. He walked with Finch to the departure gate, and when the flight was boarding James and Kitty tactfully went on ahead.

      ‘You know where I am.’

      Finch hesitated, ashamed to find that at this last minute she was tempted to retract everything she had said in exchange for the promise of comfort and security. Ralf was large and strong and, in retrospect, reassuring. She squeezed down hard on the impulse. ‘Of course I do.’

      He kissed her – not on the mouth but on the cheek, as affectionately as if he were James. ‘And call me, when you can.’

      ‘Of course I will.’

      It was finished, both of them knew it.

      Isn’t this what you wanted? Finch’s interior voice enquired impatiently.

      He stood back to let her walk away. She turned round once to look at him, lifted her hand, then marched forward.

      She took her seat in front of Kitty and James. Kitty made a small sad face, turning down the corners of her mouth, and James nodded calmly. The place next to Finch was empty and as the little plane climbed and disconcertingly rocked through the layers of cloud she thought about the man who had made himself her neighbour on the way up from Oregon. My wife is a nervous flier, he had said presumptuously. She had forgotten his name.

      Breathing as evenly as she could, Finch rested her head against the seat back. This time the day after tomorrow she would be airborne again. All her expedition kit was double-checked, packed, labelled, waiting in her tidy apartment. The medical supplies she had ordered with George Heywood’s authorisation were already with the main body of expedition stores in Kathmandu. There remained only two more days and dinner with her family to negotiate.

      ‘Everything looks fine,’ Finch told her last patient of the day, as she peeled off her gloves. They chatted while the woman dressed and agreed that they would continue

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